


Come On, Come On; It's The End of the World

by BecauseF3IsAPauseButton



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Blood, F/F, Prison, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:53:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BecauseF3IsAPauseButton/pseuds/BecauseF3IsAPauseButton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Piper kills Doggett. Alex looks at the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come On, Come On; It's The End of the World

The fucked up part, Alex found after the Christmas pageant, was that even after they’d taken Doggett away, Piper wouldn’t stop shaking. It was like she was still stuck in the snow. Even when they took her to SHU, she didn’t say anything. Piper had always been either very expressive or non-expressive in the years they’d been together. Most of the time, it was like reading a book, seeing her little stunned WASP face or her intimate moments. There’d been occasions though, where something had gone down or her temper had gotten her into an argument – that was her thing, she couldn’t just let things go, wasn’t the type of person to plan anything, was just this impulsive livewire in human skin – and she’d just blank. It was unhealthy and she attributed it to Piper’s WASP-y alcoholic upbringing and had met her parents a couple of times, summarily forgotten about by them by the time they’d figured out she wasn’t anything like them.

Piper was in the SHU for three months, five days, seven hours and Alex and Nicky had sex fifteen different times when they could get the time, they were bored, nothing else was going on when she was released. 

If Janae had been bad, Piper was worse. Everyone had seen Janae stand outside, arms outstretched, taking in the light, breathing in the air, as if this was the only thing she could ever do with her life. Piper had shied away from the light, jerked away from the guards, terrified Fischer with her very presence before she was even in sight. Lorna said she was bad.

“She wouldn’t look out the window,” Lorna told them at lunch. Alex tried not to be interested because Piper was a) a fucking bitch, b) fucking psycho, c) had walked out on her in her most dire moment for something so fucking stupid that it didn’t even bear remembering, d) and was now a murderer. 

Nicky leaned in closer to Lorna – she always did that, leaned in closer not because she was paying attention but because she wanted to occupy all the space, make herself bigger and more important – and asked, “What’d ya mean?”

Lorna’s hands started spazzing out, “I mean, she wouldn’t look out the window. Normally, everybody who gets out the SHU, face plastered to the window, right? Not Chapman. Stared at the ceiling the whole time. Just hugged herself and stared.”

Boo shrugged, but her voice was soft, “Probably too much going on. The SHU fucks you up, we all know that.”

Alex had never been in the SHU and never wanted to be and was, quietly, terrified for Piper although admitting it would have been the last thing she did.

After the SHU, Piper laid in bed and stared at the far wall and didn’t even get up to use the bathroom or eat for another week, so they put her in Psych. She was in Psych for two weeks before her mom came to visit and demanded she see a therapist and be mainstreamed under threat of a lawsuit when the guards told her. She went to the warden, demanded the ground video tape, and within the hour Sam Healy was suspended without pay.

Alex could hear her now, screaming at the warden, “You were the people who let that lunatic go after my child! You were the incompetent buffoons who let that lesbian witch hunter leave when she asked for help! She’s not even a lesbian, she’s bisexual!”

Within the week, everyone knew Piper wouldn’t talk unless directly asked a question and you had to approach her from in front otherwise they’d go the way of Black Cindy, who was still cussing about “vampire slayer strength bullshit in some little ass cracker girl” when Piper had elbowed her in the stomach, and that she stared too intently into another’s eyes. She was like Crazy Eyes but Crazy Eyes still talked and interacted even if it was in her own insane fashion.

She was starved for contact, jonesing for it the way an addict did after some point between six and thirty hours of the last fix, when Alex finally felt sorry for her and led her into the laundry room. Leading her was a little strong. She’d pretty much said, “Piper, come here.” And Piper had looked at her as if she’d hung the stars and moon in the sky and followed behind her. The machines were overheating from constant use so they were turned off and washing had been delayed for two more days

Piper shuffled in behind her, tiny and fragile in her sweatshirt, and she could not reconcile her image with the snarling creature of Tiffany’s demise. Red had gotten a copy of the video tape and they’d watched it in shifts, watched Doggett attack Piper and Piper do what the girls from the ghetto told her to, then just start wailing on Pensatucky, wailing on her until her face was mush and she held onto her throat and shook her, shook her like a dog with a rat until Pensatucky jerked, kept jerking for a few seconds, until one of the guards came and found them. Officially, Doggett wasn’t murdered. She’d suffered a massive heart attack brought on by stress and had been dead before Piper’s asphyxiation took effect on her. She’d been in SHU for getting into a fight.

Returning from Psych, she was like a robot. She did exactly as told and nothing else. She was a guard’s favorite inmate. Her face was sunken in from lack of nutrition and she’d definitely seen Red slip her a second tray when the guards weren’t looking but she didn’t have the appetite to keep it up, never had. The other girls from the ghetto bickered over it quietly so the guards didn’t hear and decided to trade it between them and someone would always eat what Piper didn’t. 

But no one really touched Piper because they’d seen her hands afterwards, could see her hands now. Doggett might have been dead, but her marks were left; heavy, crooked teeth imprints all over her knuckles, the white trash hillbillies who glared after Piper. There’d still been blood under her nailbeds when she came back. 

She took a deep breath and turned to look at Piper. Piper looked up at her with blank, blue eyes. Even though she’d been through hell, she somehow looked younger, back to the fresh-faced college grad trying to lie on her application, if much more pale and drawn. 

“Piper,” Alex said, and was immediately frustrated with her own voice, soft in ways it wasn’t supposed to be. She took her glasses off so she didn’t have to see the little face and long dark eyelashes. “Piper,” She repeated. “Do – Would you like a hug?”

“You said I wasn’t supposed to come to you with anything,” She replied, in this new quiet voice. Alex narrowed her eyes. God damn this woman; she always remembered the things Alex didn’t want her to.

Her voice was flat, “I’m asking. Would you like a hug from me?”

Piper’s eyes drifted away minutely as she thought, then she brought them back to Alex and nodded. 

Alex brought her hands up, then wrapped them around Piper’s thin shoulders and brought her close. Piper smelled like soap, like she’d scrubbed herself raw, and underneath was the softened natural scent of human. Piper clung to her back, face pressed to her neck, breathing hard like just before a really good orgasm – or one of her infamous panic attacks, like the one in the Puerto Rican airport, where they’d lost track of each other and Piper had to be coaxed out of the restroom.

Alex couldn’t tell which one because Piper had changed, and she had changed, and it had not been together. 

“I missed you,” Alex murmured to her. Piper drew back, eyes full of emotion, then slammed her forehead into Alex’s mouth.

Alex let go in shock, bringing one hand up to her mouth even as the taste of blood bloomed in her mouth, thick and impossible.

“What the fuck?” She exclaimed, trying to feel where the cut was.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten,” Piper told her, voice silky soft and empty. “You’re the reason I’m like this.”

Piper turned on her heel and left with no words. Alex swallowed the taste of blood, then brushed her bottom lip with a thumb. Piper had always had a hard head.

She found herself smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "I Can Barely Breathe" by the band Manchester Orchestra.
> 
> It's possibly going to be a series but it depends on what I have time to do.


End file.
